Rails Rumble Voting Is Go – 22 New Ruby Webapps To Check Out!

Rails Rumble is an annual Ruby (and Rails) development contest where developers attempt to build a working web app in 48 hours. This year it took place between 22-23 August and you can now vote on the top 22 applications (as ranked by an expert panel - disclaimer: I was on the panel). Despite its name, Rails Rumble is not only for Rails applications - this year, any application that uses Rack could be entered. I wasn't aware of this before the contest took off, but hopefully with this in mind many more Sinatra and Ramaze entries could join the fold next year.

My Top Picks

I don't really want to sway the voting but there are a couple of apps that jumped out at me and that I think you'd like to learn about even if you don't want to go and vote:

Hurl:Hurl is a Web equivalent of HTTP request tool curl. It lets you make HTTP requests from a Web page and then analyze the results in detail (including headers, etc). It comes from Github's Chris Wanstrath and Pownce's Leah Culver.

Lazeroids:Lazeroids is a Web version of arcade classic Asteroids. It's multiplayer and is pretty fun to play with even if it has a few quirks.

How's My Code?:How's My Code is a Git-based lightweight code review app. You don't get much of an idea from the front page, but sign up and log in and you'll see this is a well designed and useful tool. If you work in a remote team environment and use Git at all, check it out. Basically you can comment on any commits made on git repositories of your choice.

Hosting Statistics

One of Rails Rumble's main sponsors is virtual private server provider (and Ruby Inside sponsor) Linode who provide free servers for Rumble participants to use and they put together a page with statistics about how their machines were used during the contest. It turns out 80% of participants used their Linode in some way or another, that 81% of those then chose to use Ubuntu, and 68% of users went with Phusion Passenger to deploy their app.